This text has two goals: the first is to present the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as elaborated by Bruno Latour, and the second, to provide a context for understanding some of the problems touched upon in the Prologue in the form of a dialogue between a student and his (somewhat) Socratic Professor. Since the question how ANT differs from other theoretical approaches is of essence to both, the author points out to the originality of the Theory's resolutions whilst emphasising how it may differ against its alternative approaches. ANT is rooted in the laboratory anthropology current, hence its attachment to a meticulous empirical description. Therefore, having raised issues traditionally being a domain of philosophy of science or sociology, ANT has contributed its own unique perspective and resolutions, enabling an innovative method of perceiving the relatedness between cognitional practices (science) and politics.
The present text discuses selected theses of Bruno Latour's book 'Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory', intended as a systematic introduction to the Actor-Network Theory (ANT). ANT is an extremely philosophically innovative concept, rooted in a tradition, more than thirty years old now, of so-called social studies on science which can be defined as a current within non-classical sociology of knowledge. ANT is presented as an alternative social metatheory, or, a specific methodology. The authoress rejects a hyposthasis of (the) Society, which has been preventing social sciences from an adequate recognition of several mechanisms, particularly those characteristic to a global risk society. The essay highlights that ANT is not yet another version of a social constructivism. For the co-author of this position, it is important that it be empirical as well, and that social sciences appreciate the role of objects, things, referred to as 'our younger brothers'.
The paper aims at illustrating two different philosophical views on one and the same activity, namely a waiter’s job performance, in particular a waiter from the famous Parisian Café de Flore. The first view is exemplified by Sartre’s notes about the waiter’s behaviour in Being and nothingness [1943] which he probably wrote down just in that cafe. The second view offers Bruno Latour in his book Paris: Invisible City [1998] in which he analyses the operating procedures of a waiter in the same cafe. These two approaches shed some light on the conditions in this coffee bar.
The article tries to apply the methodological conception devised by Bruno Latour for research into relations between man and animals. The reflections concern a concrete group of animal owners who breed pedigree cats, and with whom the author has been cooperating for a number of years. The Latour mythology proves to be of help for analysing a 'project' involving the cat, an ideal representative of the species in the eyes of its breeder. At the same time, it discloses discrepancies contained in the very idea of the possibility of designing an object of culture as complicated as a living animal. Pedigree cats are something more than the sheer dreams of their designers, and biology turns out to be a partner and not a passive substance. The text refers to the traditional objects of interest of cultural anthropology - the relations between man and the natural environment.
The paper deals with the concept of text, showing its transformations in semiotic studies. First, the text is excluded from semiotics in favour of the system and its paradigmatic perspective, as shown in the works of L. Hjemslev. Then the meaning of the text is reconsidered as in later works of Barthes and mainly in the text theory of J. Kristeva. Both of them mark the transition to the further, poststructuralist stage of semiotics. This transformation made the text close to the image of a network. The paper goes even further. Following B. Latour it tries to justify the acceptation of hybrids and impurities. Moreover, it requires not only a reconsideration of the philosophical method, but also an acceptation together with impurities the effects of balkanization.
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